I'm pretty far from what I'd consider to be an audiophile. I know that based on the extremes that people can go with this stuff that I'm never going to bring myself to justifying that kind of obsessive behavior, but I do believe in quality and performance and when you find something that works that the price is usually well worth it. These headphones are the definition of money well spent. I had bought blister pack junk in the $50-100 range for years with about every single year requiring replacement. Not only did they not hold up, but they just never really sounded great. I think that the sound quality has been discussed to death on these over the years as they are far from being a new product. The only thing that I'll mention in that regard is that they are one of the most sensitive sets of headphones I've ever heard. When I was shopping for a "big boy" pair of cans I A/B'd every single headphone I could get my hands on and I discovered pretty early on that some of the higher end ones were going to require a dedicated headphone amp. These do not. I would be afraid to put an amp through these out of fear of blowing my ears out. Portable, computers, etc., all drive these to insane volume levels with no problems and to me that means that their amps don't have to work as hard so I have less chance of distortion from overdriving the circuit.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it makes sense to me.

The reason why I'm posting this "review" is because I recently replaced the cord on mine. Now it wasn't that it wasn't working any longer, but I wanted a coily one so that I wouldn't be running over it with my chair anymore and I came across this place in my online search for a replacement. It's funny because this was the place that I found when I was shopping for them the first time. I thought that it would be cool to do a ten year trial period review. ;)

I've had to replace the earpads once. I've replaced the cord with a coily copper one from Sennheiser. Now I don't get all wrapped up in the oxygen free depleted uranium titanium shielded kevlar cable stuff, but I did notice a marked difference in sound quality. Not massive, but noticeable. While I'm sure some will argue that is because of the copper I honestly chalk it up to the fact that the other cable had been run over about 2 million times in the last decade by a chair containing my large backside. I'd like to see how well you performed after that kind of abuse. The fact that it still worked in the first place is amazing to be honest.

I'm not an occasional headphone user either. I'd say that over the course of a month there is probably about 3 days in there that I don't use them. I have never had a second's worth of problems with them in that time.

Some people may not like the way they sound. I love them, but everyone's taste is different. But I don't think that I've ever owned anything as reliable and if you calculate the money that I spent on headphones prior to buying these I would have saved a few bucks if I had just bought these in the first place. If you figure out the cost of replacing $50 clunkers over a ten year period it's not even worth considering. I've not only enjoyed outstanding performance the last decade, but I've actually come out about $250 ahead in savings on garbage. Subtract about $100 for replacement parts (pads and cable) and I still have $150 leftover and a pair of headphones that are still working as well as they did when I bought them ten years ago. I don't think that I even have anything in my house that's ten years old anymore (besides my kid and his days are numbered).

One of the best investments in anything I've ever made and I can't recommend them highly enough.